Kiyomi Kishaba
Opinion Editor
“In Blomquist, we spent half of our time talking about soccer anyways,” he joked.
“And now, we don’t have to walk,” his office-mate chuckled.
The two sat at their respective desks in the large room, with four empty desks smashed against the back corner. I sat at a long table by the windows, marveling at the blank walls that used to be filled floor to ceiling with old issues of the Mast newspaper. The only remaining sign of this room’s life as the home of the Mast was an assortment of student media magnets on the mini fridge.
“Is it okay if I take some pictures?” I asked. Professor Christian Gerzso, sitting in the desk closest to me, nodded his approval. He said the books on the shelf in the corner were his; about half of the books remaining from his destroyed office in Blomquist.
“Where are the rest of them?” I said, squatting to snap a photo.
“In boxes somewhere, I hope,” he replied.
Gerzso, along with his office-mate and fellow soccer fan of now two months, Professor Scott Rogers, were inhabitants of the Blomquist house before it was tragically broken into and flooded. As a result, they were displaced from their offices and rehoused in the old Mast newsroom. Rogers explained how the university distributed the office reassignment.
“They distribute offices by pecking order-“
“-meaning seniority-“
“-based on how many years you’ve given to PLU. In Blomquist we were the last two, and I was the last one,” Rogers finished, laughing at their predicament. The university then sent around a list of available offices, of which Gerzso and Rogers had the last pick. The choices were either offices far from work, or this shared space in the AUC.
“One of the offices was this one, so might as well,” Gerzso said. It was spacious, and in a convenient area for students to visit. Rogers agreed, mentioning the struggle of getting students to office hours in Blomquist, which, although only a street-crossing away from campus, many students deem an inconvenience, myself included.
The two described their amicable office-mate relationship, where they discuss what they’re doing in classes and other ideas for workshops and projects. Rogers said the faculty generally don’t see each other much, but in this shared space he and Gerzso can see one another work and learn from each other.
Gerzso also believes a shared office space, or common spaces for faculty in general, pro-
motes the opportunity for collaborative projects with other faculty. Buildings like Blomquist and Admin don’t have this kind of open gathering space, and therefore discourage collaboration. Discourage may be a strong word, but having offices in a small, aging house certainly doesn’t help.
The campus provides a plethora of common spaces for students, but perhaps the office and
building designs for faculty should be revised to encourage more face-to-face interaction. As students, we are taught that collaboration makes us stronger. Imagine how inspiration would strike if we saw professors work together the same way as we do. I know they all send a ridiculous amount of emails; a common space would at least save some of their inboxes.
This space, the old Mast room, used to be a large site of student collaboration. Weekly meetings of story pitches and print nights stretching too close to dawn filled the space
with our voices, on and off the paper. Now moved into the Neeb center, we have cleared the way for two professors to come together and collaborate, and most importantly, talk about soccer.
As the conversation ended, Gerzso excused himself to prepare for class. However, he turned to me and said, “You are welcome to observe the exciting time of a professor staring at the screen and at photocopies.”
Maybe my vision of professor bonding and collaboration isn’t as exciting as I want it to be; professors need quiet time for homework too. But perhaps the Blomquist break-in was a chance to try something new, something better than great minds in small, separate rooms: great minds in one big room. And although they were the last on the office list, Professors Rogers and Gerzso are the first to try it out.
